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Islam in the News Roundup

posted Saturday, May 01, 2010 2:33 PM by hussain

My brother's a graduate student at University of Chicago who gets opportunities to speak at various events, including this one, "Sundays at Rockefeller." Being a graduate student, the news isn't always as prominent in his noise stream as for us civilians (lucky him), so when he asked me:

Abbas: have any policians or media figures said anything really nutso about islam lately? :)
I practically jumped out of my seat.

So, for you, dear readers, I present Islam in the News Roundup.

Belgium bans the Veil, France trying to follow, Christian Science Monitor 04/30/2010

"The burqa has no place in France" - French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Previously, Swiss voters barred Muslims from building minarets in a referrendum held in December.
"Once we solve the burqa problem, we'll still have the problem of polygamy, of praying in the streets of big cities, of banning pork from cafeterias, in short all the sectarian demands the French are confronted with daily" - French far right leader, Marine Le Pen
Belgian lawmakers vote to ban full-face veils in public, Washington Post, 04/30/2010

Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, booted from 05/06/2010 Pentagon prayer service for calling Islam a "very violent religion," and Sarah Palin defending him

Great contrast between the military, who's supposed to be apolitical and the Congress, who's nothing but pandering political simps. Apart from the WashPo story on how the military's move could be psyops, it's a good example as to how "political Islam" is more of a term applicable to how non-muslims handle Islam in America. Oh, and earlier in Apirl a federal court ruled that the National Day of Prayer, established by Congress in 1952, was unconstitutional on separation of church and state grounds.
Other super smooth comments by Franklin include:
  • "I don't believe this is a wonderful, peaceful religion."
  • "wicked, violent and not of the same God."
Last on this topic, I'm aware that most of the links are to "lefty" blogs/newspapers. Clearly, like tons of armed white men tea partying on Washington, anti-Islam rhetoric is ignorable by most white America and a given in the media.

The Pope, trying to get out from under pedophiles and his 2006 comments regarding Islam, states you have to work with Islam
Pope: African church must work with Islam, UPI, 04/30/2010

In an audience Thursday at the Vatican with bishops from Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the pope urged them to "continue to promote dialogue with other religions and above all with Islam," the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
Here, I'm not so clear whether he means the full Church or just those in Africa.

Tariq Ramadan, banned from taking a tenured position at Notre Dame during the Bush administration has his travel restrictions removed by the Obama administration.

Formerly Banned Muslim Scholar Tours U.S., 04/29/2010
Although he's touring in the US, he says he wouldn't now teach in the US (New York Mag, 04/08/2010) - exactly what he was going to do in 2004. He's now at Oxford. That's a step up, I'd say. Some decent commentary by Ramadan about the past administration and how Islam is viewed in America or Europe from someone on the outside, literally.

Last, but not least, Ayatollah Sedighi who said that indecent fashion causes earthquakes.

  • Do immodestly dressed women really cause earthquakes?, Fitsnews, 04/27/2010. This link has cleavage!
  • Iranian cleric: Promiscuous women cause quakes, AP, 04/19/2010
    "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.
  • A minor footnote is the media getting all excited about some girl who created a Fasebook page and called it Boobquake. Yawn.
If American politicians and talking heads can condescend and pander to special interest groups, what's wrong with a little red meat from an Ayatollah (or, I guess that'd be, a little less red meat)? This is a non-story, except that it's a hilarious cultural / rhetorical difference fault point that lots of people can stuff their personal peccadillos into (that's what she said!), such as feminism, supposed oppression of women, ignorance, blah blah, boring.

I guess anything that gets women to highlight their boobies can't be bad. Rock on Hujjat al-Islam Sedighi.

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Slogans for Islam

posted Thursday, November 29, 2007 10:06 PM by hussain
In the wake of the Mohammed the Teddy Bear incident, my good friend Jack came up with some hum dingers of slogans for Islam for the idiots in Sudan and elsewhere that steadfastly fail to get it:
  • Islam:  No thanks, full up right now, maybe Jews for Jesus is hiring.
  • Islam:  If it's not Islam, don't call it Islam.  You fucking twat.
  • Islam:  If you can't read, chances are you're not practicing us.  You fucking savage.

A quote from Professor Elteyb Hag Ateya, director of Khartoum University's peace research institute.
"There is a sort of "who is the best Muslim?" competition to this whole thing which makes it difficult for the government to be seen to back down," he said.
Answer: None of you dillholes. The only thing that you're the best at is perverting Islam.

Here's one for the press:
  • The Press: Making sure to blow stuff out of proportion in the most sensational way possible, plus adding "shariah law" wherever we don't understand it. The Apprentice.

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A Trinity of Perception

posted Friday, September 15, 2006 8:57 AM by hussain

Ted Koppel
09/15: What's he doing in Iran? And why's he reporting for NPR? Didn't he retire already?  (Could he, please?) Further, why's it take him, going to Iran to talk to Iranians to find out what millions of people in the US already know: Iran's elites think that Ahmedinjad's a kook, the poor people like his reforms but think he's flirting dangerously with radical religion, much like they see Bush doing with evangelicalism, and Iran doesn't have any intention of using nuclear power for military purposes. I don't get this, honestly. Ted Koppel, gravitas; me, when I say similar stuff: biased, without basis, and America hater. Wonderful.

The Pope
09/08: God knows guarding a BMW factory doesn't make one evil, just a Nazi who likes BMWs - I've got nothing against the man, but when he goes around saying things like this:

In his speech at the University of Regensburg, Benedict quoted criticism of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who wrote that everything Mohammed brought was evil and inhuman, "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
He's asking for some sort of queer looks and shakes of the head. Why someone who's purportedly the foremost religous scholar in the Christian world would go around saying things that are potentially incendiary, I just don't get.  I don't think it's a big deal, really, it's just a blip. I know some people will see it as a big setback, especially in contrast with JP2's outreach to other faiths, including Islam, but honestly, it's a great thing for the Pope to display this sort of view - it's an opening for dialogue. A dialog not only within the Catholic Church for the Crusades, but also a Catholic-Muslim dialogue and an interfaith dialogue. The best way to take it is that he's pushing for Catholics to engage Muslims in their struggle against extremism in Islam. A slightly less "best way" is that he's indirectly addressing the Church's role in spreading the faith via the sword during the Crusades. The worst way would be that he's purposefully condemning Islam as a violent religion.  Strangely enough, statements like this can also be seen as the Pope trying to reassert the relevance of both himself and the Church in modern religious dialog.

I mention this today because, even though I cringed about it on Friday, there seem to be reports of people getting wound up about it as if the Pope were some Danish publisher pissing on freedom of speech and publishing intentionally goading cartoons. My second interpretation of Benedict's statement would be an indelicate attempt to have a Crusade catharsis. (My first was horror at the impending conflagration Benedict's going to cause, as evidenced by said cringe.  I also cringe to think that he's bought into the new modern Crusade.  Is he the next Urban? I thought that was Bush.) I think he's trying to goad Muslims into proving his ignorance face-saving statment wrong. 

Benedict may be a "hard ass" but his past shows something else: If there's anything this Pope's life stands for, it's for correcting past mistakes. Time to man up, Benedict.

Contrast this with Khatami, admittedly not analogous the Pope, but a learned Islamic scholar in his own right, even if a politican, who said things like this last week during his US tour: 'It's about time people of all faiths get together and try not to allow extremist thinking to deny the morality of modern civilization' [I'll get an exact quote for you people]. Again, wonderful.

The Media and Islam
There's state senator in Minnesota running for a federal seat in congress. He's a Democrat and a peace activist who invokes Paul Wellstone and talks about immediate Iraq withdrawal. What he doesn't talk about is that he's a Muslim. What the media talks about is how a Muslim's running for congress, not that he's continuing to ride the wave of anti-Bush Democrats. Makes me throw up a bit in my mouth about the media's sensationalism (that means being a Leftist is less threatening than being a Muslim, wheee) and also how whatever his views are will be tagged as a "standard" Muslim view. It's not, nor is there anything to the implication that Muslims or Islam aren't compatible with democraciy. Wonderment.

I've got more on Islam and democracy that requires some polish, but I thought a little threesome sampler would tide dear readers over.

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Sistani's bowing out of Iraqi politics

posted Tuesday, September 05, 2006 8:38 AM by hussain

Bad news...

I no longer have power to save Iraq from civil war, warns Shia leader
By Gethin Chamberlain and Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad (Filed: 03/09/2006)

The most influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war.

Aides say Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks.

"I will not be a political leader any more," he told aides. "I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."

more

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brief about Tablighi Jamaat

posted Wednesday, August 30, 2006 10:52 PM by hussain

In my post about the Tablighi Jamaat and its apparent ties to the recent British bombers & suspects, I failed to make a clear distinction between tabligh and the organization known as the Tablighi Jamaat. In doing so, I've caught myself in a bit of a trap.

I mentioned that I've known tablighis, ie Muslims who believe proselytization's a part of being a good Muslim (which it isn't as "spreading the good news" is in Christianity), but I didn't clarify - I don't know any tablighis, or "pilgrims," that belong to the Tablighi Jamaat. The distinction's important because, as I've mentioned, proselytizing Islam's a bit queer, if harmless, but the origins of the TJ aren't harmless. The Deobandi sect is basically an offshoot cult of Islam much more in line (not only politically but also doctrinally) with Wahhabi Salafists.

That's a bad thing, fyi. The vocabulary of Islam's foreign to the west and the distinction's not easy, since Salafists/Wahhabis and TJ Deobandi's consider themselves to be Sunnis - the only legitimate Muslims - and tend to shun the titles of "Wahhabi" (ie, followers of Ibn Wahhab - they don't think of themselves as followers of a person's doctrine, but of true Islam) and "Salafi" (see previous parenthetical). Mainstream Sunnis, themselves, have a difficult time separating Wahhabis from other Sunnis, particularly because of the large support that Wahhabis enjoy due to Saudi Arabia's support for them (see: CAIR, MSA, etc.). Further, it's tough for other Muslims (Shia, Sufis) to make the distinction due to the perception of Islamic infighting that this causes when non-Muslims hear or read criticisms of heretical cults.

If it's still not clear, Wahhabis/Salafists/Deobandis are cult and aren't Islam, imo.

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Tabligihi Jamaat linked to British airline bombing suspects

posted Thursday, August 17, 2006 7:24 PM by hussain

Today we found out that some of the British Muslims who were detained on suspicion of plotting to blow up airliners bound for the US were members of or linked to Tablighi Jamaat, an orthodox Islamic proselytizing movement (the name means "proselytizing group"). Assad Sarwar (26) and Waheed Zaman (22) are part of this movement and share that distinction with at least one of the 7/7 suicide bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and possibly another, Shehzad Tanweer.

For me, this is sort of a fortuitous event, but for you (at least most of you who don't know much about Islam), it's a new threat from within Islam. The reason it's neat for me is that I'd planned on writing a bit about the link between charity and terrorism and about why Islam is more succeptible to that angle. With Pakistan allowing Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant wing of the Dawa wal Irshad charity group, help with rebuilding the earthquake damage in Kashmir to both Hamas and Hezbullah's charity wings (look who's rebuilding the Lebanon, now), Americans should be aware that not only do the most virulent Islamic organizations have a political agenda, but they also do significant charity work. Only recently with this administration's restriction on money for AIDS and impoverished countries do we get the opportunity to feel the confusion of how religious mores affect good works.

Anyone can wikipedia either Tablighi Jamaat and LeT (hopefully, people are more aware of LeT and their influence over Pakistan) and get some information about them. TJ, in particular, is a bit of an oddity - Islam is a non-proselytizing religion, regardless of what sort of tripe the Church fostered about a "violent religion of the sword." So having a retroactively conservative organization that's managed to incorporate the heresy of "spreading the good news" starts out at being at odds with itself. Their targets are mainly the Muslim community itself, and not external conversions, and because of this, they're not considered a "cult" or anything more than really passionate by the Muslim community at large. Most Muslims, if they're aware of TJ at all, see the adherants as very pious and serious Muslims with no political agenda. Some people might want to know how I know that TJ's mostly an apolitical, peaceful, if strange, group, considering I'm not a TJ follower: I've known tablighi missionaries that've been involved with them for a very long time. The majority of them are definiately kooky, but harmless, focusing on encouraging Muslims to be better Muslims.

This isn't to say that TJ is a harmless organization. After it's origins around New Delhi, India in 1927 as a Sunni Deobandi sect organized to convert Indian Muslims whom they thought were too "indianified," a section of this loosely organized group moved - like a lot of aggressive retroactive Islamic movements - to Pakistan where they have a pattern of recruiting "believers" not just into proslyetizing missions, but in a lot of cases, towards a radicalized view of Islam. In a derrogatory way, Pakistani and Bangledeshi TJ's a "gateway drug" religion for hard-core politics. There are definitely Indian, Bangledeshi, and Pakistanki TJ groups that remain apolitical and peaceful, but I don't think those are of any interest to the media nor are they relevant to figuring out how to excise a lunatic strain from Islam.

Giving alms to the poor, a tithe, and caring for the poor are central tenets in Islam and, in this way, a lot of money's available to charity organizations. Also, since a lot of the giving is not through traditional banks, it's a great way for organizations who either lose their way or are malicious in the first place to get money under the radar. Islam is a religion of what can be explained as "works" combined with "belief" (for the Christians) - no separation of politics and religion - and those people that want to take advantage of a political agenda in the name of Islam have a bit of a leg up.

So, what's to be done about it? When people ask that question, they usually mean "So, what's Islam going to do about it?" The answer is that most Muslims have a good grasp about what's right and what's wrong with the variety of offshoots in the religion and in society. There're a few lines and when crossed, it's not for "polite company." Really, making sure that Muslims understand their own religion is a big part of all of this. Realizing that there are people who're willing sub/pervert the faith for their own ideas means that we have to be more vigilant about what the religion really means. So, next time some Deobandis or Salafists come knocking at your door or bug you on campus on one of their proselytizing missions, do what most Americans do with cults - be ready to engage them or turn them away.

Recognizing that they're not mainstream Islam and being able to discriminate between the types of these heretical bida cults is also really important for both the fight against lunatics who not only seem to be a major threat to us and our allies but who also prey on the religious for their fodder.

The British have picked up on the TJ connections and are now watching the European headquarters (called markaz) which is located in Dewsbury, England. (53.681206°, -1.628523°) There are even some reports that the British police are starting to keep track of TJ adherents as they go about some of their itinerant travels.

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I'm a big pus

posted Wednesday, August 09, 2006 7:00 PM by hussain

So, I'm at the new Edwards Cigar Shoppe, buying cigars for Jack's new child, Sloopers, and there're three guys sitting in their leather loungy chairs chatting. One of them gets up to help me and shows me around the 3rd largest humidor in Colorado (they've expanded since they moved). Nice guy, helpful, informative, gets me "It's a Boy!" stickers for the sticks.

While I'm being rung up, I'm talking with him about my car, his car, the new shoppe, etc, I overhear the other two guys talking - one guy, really. He's explaining to the other guy how Muslims are all about streaming into Europe to take advantage of their social welfare all the while setting up mosques to enforce how the locals should behave and that this behavior's been going on since the Ottoman Empire. Who're they to say what anyone should do? Additionally, how's a superior culture supposed to treat these Muslims? It's not really our fault if we have better weapons and whatnot - if they can't defend themselves in Lebanon or Iraq, they lose, just like the American Indians.

Further, with something he read in the NRO that said that Israel or the US doesn't really have "winning" as a goal in mind, he posited: What'd be wrong with that anyway? We should want to "win" and these oppressive, ignorant Muslims, such as the Palestinians, who just want to impose their rules and take advantage of our wealth should eat it.

I took my cigars and left. Yeah, a few times I wanted to engage and did turn around once or twice at places where counterpoints would've made him think (such as his truncated history - the Crusades; historicity being a much more present thing in middle eastern minds; the situation of the Palestinians not nearly being "won" or "winning," Israel's deliberate apartheid culture), but I stopped myself.

I had a transaction to complete, and it just isn't polite to interrupt a guy's ramblings. I figured, I'm brown enough - my body language should be sufficient for the guy to get a clue, lower his voice, or whatever. Or not. I thought, briefly, maybe I could engage, sit down, smoke one of the hour-longs I bought and have some sort of conversation with them. I wanted to know how many Muslims he knew, how many Republican-voting Muslims he knew - I'm guessing a whopping 0 & 0. But what'd've done? My transaction was over.

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How do you feel about it?

posted Saturday, April 08, 2006 2:46 PM by hussain

I'm reading Moazzam Begg's Enemy Combatant, about this British national's experience from being caught up in a sweep in Afghanistan and held at Bagram and Guantanamo, to being freed in 2005 w/o charges. Here's a quote from Clive Stafford Smtih, his British death row lawyer talking to him, while Begg was in Gitmo:

In the US they have always hated black people, but never feared them. During the Cold War, they feared the Soviets, but never hated them. With the Muslim world, they fear you and hate you.

That seems to about sum it up for now.

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In The Backyard

posted Tuesday, March 21, 2006 8:47 AM by hussain

This morning, as I walked into work, the security guard I like did the verbal double take a lot of people here do: "Hi, Saddam, er uh, " his voice getting lower and then correcting himself. I, as per usual, ignored it, since it was obvious he was making a mistake, and went on with the morning niceties. Don't get me wrong, he's a good guy, very friendly and usually goes out of his way to say hi when he's around (they rotate the guards), but seriously, after a while, this camel's back gets one too many straws on it. Here's one of them:

Today, as the Colorado Caucus starts nominating representatives, let's hope this guy gets thrown out on his ass: Nearly two years ago, Jim Welker (R-Loveland), the representative from House District 51 sent an e-mail to constituents titled “Beware of Islam in America.”

The subject line of the May 2004 e-mail read "Beware Of Islam In America." The text, which Wright [a Fort Collins Pastor who received Welker's e-mail] provided to the newspaper, said in part, "Can a devout Muslim be an American patriot and loyal citizen? ... Politically, no. Because he must submit to the mullah, who teaches annihilation of Israel and destruction of America, the great Satan."

Is this guy serious? Is this guy still in office? What the ever loving? Now I want to be gerrymandered into his district just to vote against him.

Welker apologized on the House floor for an forwarded e-mail he sent recently (March 6, 2006), commenting on how moral poverty caused Katrina.

"I don't condone those comments" in Peterson's essay, Welker told colleagues. [I just forward them along.] "I offer my sincere apologies to this body and to the public (and) to the people of Loveland. I hope I become a better person for having made a big mistake." [It hasn't worked in the past, so I don't see why it would now.]
Also...
Welker, 58, is a Christian who said he believes the Bible is meant to be read literally.
... I wonder if anyone's asked him if he can read Greek?

Usually I ignore shit like this (see Tom "Let's Bomb Mecca" Tancredo, R-Littleton) because, like hello dude, I live in (growing) white(r) America.  Since Welker judges (judge not lest ye be judged) and doesn't really seem to fear being judged, here's mine:

People of Loveland, listen the fuck up: Toss this anti-American ignoramus who "represents" you out. Rest of you Colorado Republicans, be ashamed of how Welker portrays your party. The irony that it's a Republican being racist (someone harness the energy from Lincoln spinning in his grave already) is way too much to take. And, if not, and you guys think he's an upstanding Loveland citizen, well, now you know why I didn't title this post "In My Backyard."

Pastor: Lawmaker Sent Earlier E-Mail About Muslims, cbs4denver/AP
E-mail Exposes Trend 03/17/2006, LovelandFYI
... and so many others.

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I'm making a list

posted Tuesday, March 14, 2006 9:34 AM by hussain
Here's a nice succinct way of putting it:
The ironic fact is that the UAE is precisely the kind of Arab ally the United States needs most now. But that clearly didn't matter to an election-year Congress, which responded to the Dubai deal with a frenzy of Muslim-bashing disguised as concern about terrorism. And we wonder why the rest of the world doesn't like us.
Burning Allies -- and Ourselves, an op-ed in the Washington Post by David Ignatius, 03/10/2006 (a fun aside for Ignatius can be found here, in his upcoming movie deals with director Sir Ridley Scott).

I'm making a list of people who should never talk ever again about foreign policy. Updates here.

This is the amendment added by Jerry Lewis (R-CA) regarding blocking Dubai Ports World (pdf) that has been attached to H.R. 4939 (pdf, see pp.82-83, Sec 3011) "Making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2006, and for other purposes."

House Subcommittee members voting for the amendment
Jerry Lewis (R-CA - Chairman)
C. W. Bill Young (R-FL)
Ralph Regula (R-OH)
Harold Rogers (R-KY)
Frank R. Wolf (R-VA)
Tom DeLay (R-TX)
James Walsh (R-NY)
Charles H. Taylor (R-NC)
David L. Hobson (R-OH)
Ernest J. Istook, Jr. (R-OK)
Henry Bonilla, TX (R)
Joe Knollenberg, MI (R)
Jack Kingston, GA (R)
Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, NJ (R)
Roger F. Wicker, MS (R)
Todd Tiahrt, KS (R)
Zach Wamp, TN (R)
Tom Latham, IA (R)
Anne Northup, KY (R)
Robert Aderholt, AL (R)
Jo Ann Emerson, MO (R)
Kay Granger, TX (R)
John E. Peterson, PA (R)
Virgil Goode, VA (R)
John Doolittle, CA (R)
Ray LaHood, IL (R)
John Sweeney, NY (R)
Don Sherwood, PA (R)
Dave Weldon, FL (R)
Michael K. Simpson, ID (R)
John Abney Culberson, TX (R)
Mark Steven Kirk, IL (R)
Ander Crenshaw, FL (R)
Dennis R. Rehberg, MT (R)
John Carter, TX (R)
Rodney Alexander, LA (R)
David R. Obey, WI (D - Ranking Member)
John P. Murtha, PA (D)
Norman D. Dicks, WA (D)
Martin Olav Sabo, MN (D)
Steny H. Hoyer, MD (D)
Alan B. Mollohan, WV (D)
Marcy Kaptur, OH (D)
Peter J. Visclosky, IN (D)
Nita M. Lowey, NY (D)
Jose E. Serrano, NY (D)
Rosa L. DeLauro, CT (D)
John W. Olver, MA (D)
Ed Pastor, AZ (D)
David E. Price, NC (D)
Chet Edwards, TX (D)
Robert E. "Bud" Cramer, Jr., AL (D)
Patrick J. Kennedy, RI (D)
James E. Clyburn, SC (D)
Maurice D. Hinchey, NY (D)
Lucille Roybal-Allard, CA (D)
Sam Farr, CA (D)
Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., IL (D)
Carolyn C. Kilpatrick, MI (D)
Allen Boyd, FL (D)
Chaka Fattah, PA (D)
Steven R. Rothman, NJ (D)
Sanford D. Bishop, Jr., GA (D)
Marion Berry, AR (D)

People consistently and vocally displaying no clue John Kerry (D-MA)
Harry Reid (D-NV)
Charles Schumer, (D-NY)
Howard Dean, DNC Chairman
Harold E. Ford Jr. (D, State Senator TN) - "President Bush wants to sell this port -- and five others -- to the United Arab Emirates"

Here's a set of criteria to tell that people are idiots about "ports" and "security"

  • If they use the word "own" as in 'Dubai or UAE will own ports in the US,' or "run" as in 'Dubai or UAE will run US ports'
  • If they conflate terminal operations and port security (port security, dummies, is handled by US Customs/Border and the Coast Guard)
  • If they're unaware that 80% of the west coast ports are "run" or "owned" by non-US companies and in some cases (Singapore) partially foreign-government owned companies

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sitting in my car

posted Thursday, March 02, 2006 9:38 AM by hussain

Rarely do I have public radio "driveway moments," sitting in my car listening to a program instead of going inside and turning on the radio, but sometimes work's not that exciting and there's a soy chai to be tended to.

This morning, KGNU aired a good Alternative Radio interview with Emran Qureshi who wrote an op-ed in the NYT entitled The Islam the Riots Drowned Out on their "Morning Magazine." Qureshi has a solid grasp of the history of Islam and the Islamic world as well as how the resurgence of Salafism and the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt have been trying to combat the Iranian revolution's dominance (prior to 9/11) of the image of Islam is a context worth understanding. Qureshi sets forth how this fundamentalist one-uppmanship has taken its toll on Islam. Also, he has a measured response to the issue of censorship.

The controversy comes at a time when many in the Islamic world view the war on terrorism as a war on Islam. They draw on memories of colonization and of the Crusades, when Western invaders ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad as an imposter.

Ironies abound. Saudi Arabia leads the protests, yet is systematically destroying its Islamic heritage. The Wahhabis who dominate Saudi Arabia do not believe in honoring Islam's holy men and women or the Prophet Muhammad (they've proscribed the celebration of his birthday). Driven by sectarian zeal, the Saudi authorities have razed and dug up virtually every site in Mecca and Medina linked to Muhammad, members of his family and his companions.

No, the answer is not more censorship. But it would be nice if Western champions of freedom of speech didn't trivialize it by deriving pleasure from their ability to gratuitously offend Muslims. They view freedom of speech much as Islamic fundamentalists do — simply as the ability to offend — rather than as the cornerstone of a liberal democratic polity that uses such freedoms wisely and responsibly. Worse, these advocates insist on handing Muslim radicals a platform from which to pose as defenders of the faith against an alleged Western assault on Islam.

I find his comparison of the critique of "the cartoons as hate speech" argument that I'm fond of as a bit disingenuous. He asks whether muslim-produced literature that could be construed as hate speech should be banned as well? The argument's not exactly apples-to-apples, what with Western media's inherent responsibility of weighing free speech vs. hate speech. Haters in the muslim world are obviously not going to police themselves and the western media wouldn't even know who they are, really, so they wouldn't publish them. If a media organization who is attempting to adhere to 'free speech principles' (whatever that means in Europe) itself produces encourages hate speech, that should be recognized for what it is: hypocrisy and a failing of the responsibility that comes with free speech. Regardless, his article takes a good angle to critique the popular view of Islam in America.

KGNU has mp3 archives of their interviews and when the place it up, I'll put a link here to the interview segment (the whole "Morning Magazine" tends to be 30mb and some people really don't need to hear Jim Hightower's inane ideations just to get to an interesting interview). Update: Since this was an Alternative Radio live interview, KGNU cut off their recording.  You'll just have to take my word for it that it was worth sitting in the car for.

On a perfectly superficial aside aimed at "non-native" people trying to pronounce foreign-language words with some sort of ethnocorrectness: Bravo at your attempt but, please, pick a dialect. For example, if you want to pronounce "Karbala" and "Qawaali" be definite and consistent in the dialect chosen. There's nothing worse than a "dialect of the moment" pronunciation of Saudi, Iraqi, Pakistani, and Indian cities, places and things.  You can pronounce both words as Arabic or as Urdu words (which sound slightly different), but mixing the two (especially mixing up the two), makes one sound very eracism. It really hurts the ears. After a while, I'd rather hear the anglicized pronunciations rather than a well-meaning butchered attempt.

The second interesting interview, which was actually before the first and only kept me in my car for a short period of time, was with Jim Spiri, a civilian contractor who was fired from KBR for writing an article about a Las Cruces, NM soldier whose casket he helped load on a plane back from Iraq, The night Jesse Zamora was carried to the C-130. This incident seem to have blown up in KBR's face. Spiri's obviously a patriot and didn't really succumb to any anti-Bush goading of some of the callers, but he does come down pretty hard on KBR's management of their contract. From the segment, it seems like he'd been a good worker and was ground up in the bureacracy that complicates government contracts, something that hits home. Edit: Here's the interview with Jim Spiri on KGNU 03/02/2006

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The Venn Diagram of Iraqis

posted Saturday, February 25, 2006 3:07 AM by hussain

I recently dug up a Venn diagram I made a few years ago to explain the nuances of the Iraqi insurgency, lost as a broken link during a blog software change:

Iraqi players

"IIG" refers to the Iraqi Interim Government, previous secularly oriented, government.  I thought it would be good to pull this old analysis image out of rememberances of things past just to get an idea of where and how the players have moved, if at all.  Since the situation in Iraq continues to be tense, it's nice to try to put a perspective on what some of the groups and their representatives say.

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Pushing for Civil War

posted Wednesday, February 22, 2006 11:42 AM by hussain


The Askariya shrine, one of the holiest Shia sites in Iraq, was severely damaged by a large explosion in Samarra, 60 miles (95km) north of Baghdad (AP/Hameed Rasheed)

Al-Askariya shrine: 'Not just a major cathedral', Times Online UK, 02/22/2006

Today, men dressed as Iraqi police officers entered the Askariya shrine in Samarra and set off bombs ruining the dome.

But the continued and intense religious importance of the site is connected to the 12th imam, the so-called "Hidden Imam" who Shias believe went into hiding in 878 under the al-Askariya shrine to prepare for his eventual return among men. According to Shia tradition, the Mahdi will reappear one day to punish the sinful and "separate truth from falsehood". For many years, a saddled horse and soldiers would be brought to the shrine in Samarra every day to be ready for his return, a ritual that was repeated in Hilla, about 100 miles to the south, where it was also thought that Mahdi might reappear.

Here's the deal with this shrine: It's a representative of a lynchpin in Shi'a belief, the Mahdi. In this way, it's very "non-Sunni," in other words it's definitely a place to attack that would immediately cause sectarian tension. Attacking the shrines at Karbala (Hussain, the prophet's grandson) or Najaf (Ali, the prophet's son-in-law and the stem of the division between Shi'a "party of Ali" and Sunni muslims) would be undeniably serious, but both Hussain and Ali are related to the Prophet. The concept of the Mahdi, on the other hand, is a pointedly Shi'a thing that can only mean those who dressed up as Iraqi Police and set off bombs in the shrine are trying to cause a civil war. That virulently anti-Shi'i MO is very Wahhabi and therefore it points directly to Al Qaeda and our good friend Zarqawi, not necessarily Sunni Iraqi nationalists.

Professor Northedge [Alastair Northedge, a Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the Sorbonne in Paris], who last met Samarra's director of antiquities at a conference in Paris in September, believes the attack to be the work of al-Qaeda related militants from outside the town. In September, Sunni rebels in Samarra joined an unprecedented condemnation of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq after the execution of a leading cleric in nearby Ramadi. "It is really quite surprising that something like that has happened in Samarra," he says. "The people there have a a very, very powerful sense of community identity, they know how to act in their best interests." "If you look at the resistance situation in Samarra, there are two general sorts: there are local fighters and there are al-Qaeda fighters and foreign jihadis," said Professor Northedge. "I'm absolutely certain that this is not the local people from Samarra, they would not have blown it up."

Muslims have widely condemed the bombing, Sunni and Shi'a alike. Iraq's Ayatollah Sistani has called for restraint and protests, but no violence. I haven't seen any reaction from Moqtada al Sadr or his party, but I bet he's flying off the handle.

Al-Forat television, run by a Shi'ite political party, showed the ageing and reclusive Sistani flanked by his three most senior colleagues in the holy city of Najaf after Sistani called for protests but restraint following the attack in Samarra.

Earlier Sistani, a key force for Shi'ite restraint in the face of Sunni insurgent attacks, called for protests and declared seven days of mourning. He insisted in a statement, however, that there must be no violence and in particular no reprisals against Sunni mosques.

Update: Sadr, who continues to show that he should be marginalized, but gets people's blood going, reacted to this by calling for violence and blaming what can only be an Al Qaeda attack on Iraqi cohesion on America on Israel. Good going. Thanks for proving, once again, that you're not your father and not even your brother. Woe is us.

Sistani in rare TV appearance, Kurdish Media/Reuters, 02/22/2006

Here's a "before" picture of the mosque, from GlobalSecurity.org:

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Ashura and Violence

posted Thursday, February 09, 2006 8:43 AM by hussain

Ashura ("the tenth day," Arabic) commemorates the death of the Prophet's 2nd grandson, Hussain, in Karbala at the culimination of the 10 day seige of Hussain and his 72 followers by the Ummayid Caliph's 30,000 strong army. Islam was undergoing a sectarian moment in 61 AH (680 AD), just about 40 years after the Prophet Mohammed's death. Yazid required the family of the Prophet to pledge fealty to him in order to solidify his rule. The martyrdom only solidified the basis for the schism between Sunnis and Shia (followers of the descendants of the Prophet). Modern commemoration during the Islamic month of Moharram lasts ten days with a passion play and the mourning of the death of most of the prophet's family.

Ashura (asor in Hebrew, also "the tenth") corresponds to the Jewish festival of Yom Kippur and is also the traditional date in Islamic theology when Noah's Ark came to rest. Due to the closeness of the Jewish and Islamic communities back in the day, the 10th day of the 7th month is a recommended day of fasting as per the Quran (2:183-187): "[keeping] the fast as it was prescribed for those before you". Here the Prophet is seen as encouraging muslims to adopt fasting on the Day of Atonement. Numerous sayings attributed to the Prophet(called hadith, via Bukhari) mention the event when the Prophet came to Medina and found the Jews fasting and ordered his followers to do the same. Many Sunnis observe this fast.

More Info: The Fast of Ashura (ummah.net), Ashura (google), Viewpoint: Ashura (BBC)

Also, unfortunately, Moharram's become a time when Sunnis and Shia clash.

Hangu, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan 33.5533, 71.060 (33.5327778, 71.06) 2690 ft., pop. 22974

A suspected suicide bombing on minority Shi'ite Muslims in Pakistan killed at least 23 people, wounded dozens and triggered violence on an important holy day that killed at least four more, police said.
The attack targeted a procession in the town of Hangu in North West Frontier Province to mark Ashura, the holiest day for Shi'ites. Officials reported several blasts. (Reuters)
Violence Mars Ashura Festival, CNN

Herat, Afghanistan 34.345, 62.200 (34.345, 62.1997222) 3064 ft., pop. 4159

Hundreds of Shiite Muslims and Sunnis clashed in a western Afghan city Thursday during an important Shiite festival, hurling grenades and burning mosques, officials and witnesses said. At least four people were killed and 51 injured. (ABC/AP)

Previously, I'd posted a list of violence against Shia, powerlessness.

Incidentally (and somewhat related due to him being not only Jewish but also requiring punches to the facionekal region), today's Jack's birthday.

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Women as Bombs

posted Sunday, December 04, 2005 2:01 AM by hussain

A Newsweek article, Women of Al Qaeda, to be published in their 12/12/2005 issue, profiles the women who’ve recently chosen to become suicide bombers in the name of Islam. This is a summary.

  • September, 2005 – Unnamed woman, suicide bomber that killed 5, wounded 30, Tal Afar, Iraq, near Syrian border
  • October, 2005 – unnamed woman and husband attack an American patrol in Mosul
  • November 9, 2005 - Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, 35, the would-be Jordanian bomber whose bomb belt failed to go off while her husband’s, to whom she’d been married for less than a week, did. Her three brothers and sister’s husband died fighting against the Americans.
  • November 9, 2005 - Muriel Degauque, 38, blew herself up attacking Iraqi police, Baqubah, Iraq

The article postulates that the use of women suicide bombers will make American soldiers suspicious of women, particularly pregnant women, and searching them “invasively” will create popular anger - "It's a win-win proposition for the terrorists," Mia Bloom author of “Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror”

Recruiting women as suicide bombers is seen as a late stage / entrenched tactic, "It comes when the battle escalates to all sectors of society. It happens after men become activists in guerrilla groups, fight and die, perhaps in suicide attacks. Then the widows or family members —seek vengeance, or want to give their life in the same cause." – Haizam Amirah Fernandz, a Madrid-based analyst. The article as well as Mia Bloom also proposes that the trend of violence is empowering to these women, especially the modern Palestinian ones chosing that route.

Women fighters and terrorists are nothing new, Palestinian women being engaged in attacking Israel since the 1970s. The first suicide bomber, 27 year old Wafa Idris, killed an Israeli civilian and wounded 140 in January, 2002.

The article states that there’s been much religious legal debate as to using women as suicide bombers and not until January 2004 did a Palestinian Hamas woman, Reem al-Riashi, mother of two, carry out a mission.

Religious scholars who endorse suicide attacks have come up with a paradise for women as an alternate to the male bombers popularized “72 virgins” – as related by Thauria Hamur, 26, captured before completing her mission she said women martyrs would “become the purest and most beautiful form of angel at the highest level possible in heaven.”

Groups which've used women suicide bombers:
  • Liberation Tigers in Sri Lanka (non-Muslim)
  • Chechnya’s “black widows”
  • Palistinan “army of roses”
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powerlessness

posted Friday, November 18, 2005 7:23 AM by hussain

Software design and development gives one a nice artificial sandbox to exert power and, might I add, easily lose and find sanity.  That's a topic for another day.  Today, NPR woke me up at 6:20 to tell me 65+ people were blown up in mosques in Iraq.  Shia, near the Iranian border.

Guardian NY Times Al Jazeera

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up at two mosques during Friday prayers in Khanaqin, Iraq, near the Iranian border and about 90 miles NE of Baghdad.  Khanaqin's mostly Kurdish.  The Sheik Murad mosque and the three story Grand Khanaqin Mosque got housed and they're digging people out of the rubble.  About 75 people dead so far, with 75 injured.  A third suicide bomber targetted a bank in town.

I'd make a Google Earth kml, but what's the point? (semi-intentional pun)  I've wanted to make a list of attacks on Shi'a for a while, but I don't have the motivation right now.

Also, in Baghdad, two car bombs (a white van and a white truck) blew up about 30 seconds apart near what was the intended target - al-Hamrah Hotel, where some international reporters live/work (first one to rip the blast barrier to the hotel, second for the hotel - the second one fell into the crater created by the first and never made it to the hotel). Blast barriers stopped the trucks from doing damage to the hotel, but a bunch of residential buildings collapsed with 6 people dead, at last report.  For some reason, all the reports mention how many cars were damaged, too: about 30.  I don't know why I find that odd.  Maybe because I keep hearing Dominque de Villepin saying anything under 100 burned cars a day is normal.

  • Nov. 2, 2005 - A suicide bomber blows up a minibus in an outdoor market packed with shoppers ahead of a Muslim festival, killing about 20 people in Musayyib, a Shiite town south of Baghdad.
  • Oct. 31, 2005: A car bomb explodes on a bustling street in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, killing 20 people.
  • Oct. 29, 2005: A bomb hidden in a truck loaded with dates explodes in a Shiite farming village northeast of Baghdad, killing 30 people.
  • Sept. 29, 2005: Three suicide attackers detonate car bombs in the mostly Shiite town of Balad, north of Baghdad, killing at least 99 people.
  • Sept. 19, 2005: A car bomb rips through a market in a poor Shiite neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, killing at least 30 people.
  • Sept. 14, 2005: A suicide car bomber strikes as day laborers gather to find work in the heavily Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah in northern Baghdad, killing at least 88 people.
  • Aug. 17, 2005: Three car bombs explode near the Nadha bus station in Baghdad and at the nearby Kindi Hospital, killing up to 43 people.
  • July 16, 2005: A suicide bomber detonates explosives strapped to his body at a gas station near a Shiite mosque in Musayyib, blowing up a fuel tanker and killing about 100 people.
  • March 10, 2005: A suicide bomber blows himself up at a Shiite mosque during a funeral in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least 47 people.
  • Feb. 28, 2005: In the deadliest single strike since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a suicide car bomber attacks mostly Shiite police and National Guard recruits in Hillah, killing 125. Some of the dead are at a nearby market.
  • Feb. 18, 2005: Suicide bombers attack two mosques, killing 28 people, while an explosion near a Shiite ceremony kills two other people.
  • Dec. 19, 2004: Car bombs tear through a Najaf funeral procession and Karbala's main bus station, killing at least 60 people in the two Shiite holy cities.
  • Aug. 26, 2004: A mortar barrage slams into a mosque filled with Iraqis preparing to march on Najaf, killing 27 people.
  • March 2, 2004: Coordinated blasts from suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives strike Shiite shrines in Karbala and in Baghdad, killing at least 181 people.
  • Aug. 29, 2003: A car bomb explodes outside a mosque in Najaf, killing more than 85 people, including Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim. Although officials never gave a final death toll, there were suspicions it may have been higher.
Including today, that's near 700, just this year in Iraq. (From the San Jose Mercury News/AP)

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Abu Musab al-Suri caught?

posted Thursday, November 03, 2005 1:32 PM by hussain

from Pak Tribune, in Quetta, Pakistan 10/31, in the evening:

“QUETTA, November 04 (Online): Law enforcing agencies have arrested two Al-Qaeda suspects during a raid on a house in the city of Quetta. The arrests took place on Oct 31 after Iftari time during a raid by law enforcing agents at Al-Madina Utility store at Gawalmandi Chowk.”

"After an exchange of firing Al-Qaeda leader Mustafa Setmarian Nasar and an Afghan national who is said to be a member of Jaish Mohammad were arrested while another AL-Qaeda suspect Sheikh Ali Mohammad Al Salam was killed."

I took a peek at GEO TV, Pakistan's satellite news channel, and they had an interview with a top security official who said that the op was on Tuesday and was based upon a tip and that both individuals arrested were foreign nationals.

Who is Mustafa Setmarian Nasar?

Mustafa Setmarian Nasar is also known as Abu Musab al-Suri (he's of Syrian descent, with Spanish nationality since 1987) wanted in Spain and a suspect in the London 7/7 bombings.  Mostly a writer or propagandist for al Qaeda, he's claimed to have receieved training in explosives, special operations, and guerilla tactics "in Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt."  Iraq, huh?  During the mid 90's, he was in the UK as "a European intermediary for Al-Qaeda" and was closely associated with the Algierian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), editing their underground jihadi exile magazine.  After a split with them, he went off to Afghanistan where he swore allegiance (bayat) to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. He fought in Afghanistan against the Americans and went into hiding thereafter, fighting the jihad via his writings.

A sample, on the use of chemical/radioactive weapons:
I believe now that the American administration has revealed the evil and wickedness of its forces during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is not a far cry from justice to adopt the slogan, 'Dirty Bombs for a Dirty Nation.' This is practically equal treatment.  Let the American people - those who voted for killing destruction , the looting of other nations' wealth, megalomania, and the desire to control others - be contaminated with radiation! We apologize for the radioactive fallout.
  • MSNBC's background on al-Suri
  • Evan Kohlmann's profile (pdf) of Abu Musab al-Suri.

There're some interesting avenues for analysis here: catching a pr guy for al Qaeda can result in knowing more about their network, catching any guy in Quetta means that the local police are (possibly) "doing their job," catching a guy in Quetta (see below) might mean that said guy is on the outs with the local sympathies (my personal favorite), and (a slightly more obscure one that combines the last analysis jump-point) catching an ex-GIA guy could mean that the shout out the "Zawahri" letter gave to the "Algerian brothers" isn't what it seemed (apart from the fact that letter doesn't seem to be what it seems).

Where is Gawalmandi Chowk in Quetta, Pakistan?

Quetta (map), a city of about 700k, is in Baluchistan province (a 350,000 km2 area, with about 6.5 million people (1998)) in southwest Pakistan.  It's a somewhat 2nd tier Pakistani city as far as size goes (~10th largest).

It's frustrating looking for maps for an area that seems to be described as quaint, historical, and picturesque.  I guess no one spends any time in town.  There are sparse maps on-line for Quetta and there aren’t any that I can find that show either the Pashtoonabad or Khartobad areas of the city.  And no luck at all finding Gawalmandi Chowk. (major intersection)

Another fun note about this city is that it's ethnicity's quite mixed: Afghanis (Pustuns), Pakistanis, Punjabis, Iranians, a melting pot city if you will.

So, the search proceeds to look at Taliban-y/al Qaeda-y connections in Quetta, what with it being a huge Taliban supporter in the late 90’s to pretty much now and under 45 miles from Afghanistan.  It's not very hard to find references to Quetta or Baluchistan wrt to the Taliban.  There's even pretty recent info:

01/29/2005 “16 Taliban held in Quetta,” Rediff
01/28/2005 “Pakistan police arrest 23 Afghans,” USA Today

“"Yes, we have arrested 16 suspects in different raids conducted in Pashtoonabad and Kharotabad areas of the city," DIG of Police, Quetta Rafi Pervez Bhatti said.” (Rediff)

Pashtoonabad is frequently cited as region that has Kashmiri Jihadi sympathy and Taliban madrassas, particularly Dar-ul-Loom (also Darul Uloom, “House of Sciences” – a phrase equivalent to a center of higher learning, is too generic to be definitive) a Hanafi school located in the area.

09/01/2001 “Pakistan’s Role in the Kashmir Insurgency,” Peter Chalk, Jane's Intelligence Review, Rand Corporation commentary

The fun one is looking at who the local government's made of.  Here's a random one:

Elected representative Maulvi Noor Muhammad Hussain of the Mutahidda Majlis-i-Amal Pakistan (MMAP) party – a group that wants to enforce the Sharia
http://www.na.gov.pk/baluch.htm (see if you can tell which ones are Talibani - yeah, I know, not scientific, but then you can look at their MMAP designation)
http://www.khyber.org/people/pol/MaulviNoorMuhammad.shtml
http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/sa/sa_apr03/sa_apr03mia01.html

What do you know, Maulvi Noor Muhammad’s mailbox is at the Dar ul-Uloom in Pashtoonabad.

It's a bit speculative to say that Abu Musab al-Suri was on the outs with the ex-Taliban sentiment of the town and was ratted out to local police, but a "border town" like Quetta's sort of opaque to me.  More to keep eyes on.

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Here's something interesting...

posted Wednesday, October 12, 2005 12:33 AM by hussain

In light of last weekend's "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" played before seeing "Waiting...," I've an idea for a new game: "Six Degrees of Bin Laden."

Give me a place, name, or mineral and I'll come up with a relationship path to OBL. (And yes, Bert to Bin Laden is still way too easy).  Colorado you say?

Ok, and I'll raise you the non-obvious, putting aside the 1949 Greeley, CO/Sayyid Qutb/Muslim Brotherhood connection (Greeley; Qutb; Zawahiri; OBL) and the list of prisoners at the ADX Florence, CO supermax prison (Ramzi Yousef, for one; his uncle, KSM; OBL) .  This week's installment will be Jamaat al-Fuqra.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra, Arabic for "community (or party, organization) of the impoverished," is a militant Pakistani Islamist group "formed by a Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani [alt. spelling: Jilani, also Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Jilani Hashemi or Hashmi], in New York in 1980, on his first visit to the US" - via a group also known by the distinctive name of "Muslims of America" or "Muslims of the Americas" - that has a presence in Colorado and Virginia, apparently.  The objective of the group, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, is to purify Islam of percieved Western influence via violence.  Hallmark targets in the 80's were Hindus, Hindu temples, and Hare Krishnas (Seattle, Denver, Philly, KC).

JF is linked to the 1993 WTC bombing (Clement Rodney Hampton-el), to members DC shooter ex-NOI John Allen Muhammad and shoebomber Richard Reid, and to the Daniel Pearl murder (Pearl was abducted while going to interview Gilani about Reid in Pakistan).

Jilani's reported to have preached at a Brooklyn mosque in 1980 recruiting for the Afghani jihad, has worked with Pakistanis ISI, and has been placed in Sudan at the same time as OBL (December 1993).  Jilani pulled Clement Rodney Hampton-el ("Dr. Rashid") out of the streets of NYC and onto the Afghani battlefield. 

Colorado;Jilani/JF;OBL QED

Colorado connections stem from Sheik Gilani's visits to the state in the late 1980s. A Rocky Mountain News article of Feb 12, 2002 ("Al-Fuqra Tied to Colorado Crimes") cites that Jilani or Jilani's followers looked into purchasing property in downtown Buena Vista, 101 acres 12 miles east of Buena Vista near Trout Creek Pass which was raided in 1992, and an incident involving a Colorado Springs rented locker containing explosives, pipe-bombs, handguns, manuals, surveillence maps, etc.

Fuqra popped onto the radar after a 1990 killing of a Tuscon, AZ progressive Imam, Rashid Khalifa, but only after the Colorado Springs locker was opened in 1992, and then in 1993 when Hampton-el was caught after the first WTC bombing.  Operating for more or less 10 years in the US is a good lead time for them.

Checking into some of the Fuqra members charged in the 1992 raid, we get a better picture of what occured in Colorado:

From "Fuqra member's hearing set April 2," Pueblo Chieftan, 1992

The small religious sect consists of black Muslims who believe their faith is superior to other Islamic religions. The leader of the local sect, James D. Williams, 39, was living on a 101-acre compound near Buena Vista.

That compound was the site of an intensive search by more than 60 law-enforcement officers last October. Among property seized during that search was a hidden cache of about 30 guns.

The compound Williams owns also was home to four Muslim women and more than 20 children. That property is being foreclosed on and will revert to the original owners if Williams cannot come up with the $87,000 he owes on the property.

Oddly, apart from the Colorado articles (RMN, local CO papers), most of the other sources are ever so slightly less reputable: FromTheWilderness, panic from Freepers, and the Moonies' WashingtonTimes.

An article apparently from the New York Times of January 2002, "Rural Muslims Draw New, Unwanted Attention" is about the Red House, VA compond where some familiar names appear: Vincente Pierre, who'd jumped bail in CO was picked up there along with his wife Traci Elaine Upshur. 

Searching on Suhir A. Ahmed  -- a Ph.D quoted in that article, the national spokeswoman for Muslims for the Americas, the Gilani-established group (who, incidentally, received her doctorate from Quranic Open University, a Gilani-established school, 70 miles east of Fresno, CA in a town named "Baladullah," or "City of God" in Arabic) -- leads to the Muslims for the Americas website: holyislamville.org.  Do a whois on that and check the street address in York, SC.  Yeah.  The compound in Red House, VA is on Sheikh Gilani Lane.  Theme?

So who is this guy, this Sheik Gilani?  According to his followers, he's a decendant of both Imam Hasan and Imam Hussain ("al-Hasani wal-Husani," in Arabic).  That'd make him a double-Shi'a, right?  Wrong.  He's got enough sufism in his teachings to lead towards his own offshoot, his own sect, of Islam.  And that, my friends, is flirting with the haram.  I've got a bit of reading on his philosophies (particularly "Quranic Psychiatry" and his claims of curing cancer - a sure sign of real ultimate power) and will definately get back with some analyses.  Or, at least some snide remarks.  Is it him or is it his followers who've got a penchant for violence?

Gilani was arrested and held a few weeks after Pearl went missing, but was released shortly thereafter and still resides in Lahore, Pakistan.

Sheik Gilani, CBS News, 03/12/2002

Google: International Qur’anic Open University
Locations of Fuqra compounds:
Hancock, NY
Red House, VA
Tulare County, CA
Commerce, GA
York, SC ("Islamville")
Dover, TN
Combermere, Canada

They're purported to have a classic cell structure, where each group doesn't know the exact details of the others and where the cells each cover a certain geographic region, set up by Gilani himself from his Lahore headquarters.  The Colorado group called themselves "Mohammed Soldiers 5" implying that they were the 5th cell.

Finally, Fuqra appears in the State Department's publication Patterns of Global Terrorism from 1996-1999, but not in subsequent issues.  I believe the Muslims of America group and JF are not considered terrorist or terrorist-linked organizations anymore or they've dropped off the radar.

Some future "Six Degrees of Haramiat": "Baladullah, Fresno County, CA's charter school system" to "Florida's USF Sami Al-Arian and Palestinian Islamic Jihad"?

[Edit:  If you've got Google Earth, I've started to make a placemark & overlay list on my Earth page ]

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October - November: The Great Ramadan Offensive

posted Friday, September 09, 2005 11:59 AM by hussain

The Cybercast News Service is reporting that Al Qaeda's gearing up for the terrorist season starting around October - November, this year's Islamic month of Ramadan, as per a September 2nd report by noted terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky issued on GIS, a government-only information source.  The report claims there're plans for a large attack or series of attacks on western countries - with Italy seemingly being mentioned most - that will dwarf 9/11 and draws together information from increased recent chatter, Zarqawi messengers, as well as interpretations of the August 8th video message from Ayman al-Zawhiri.

Bodansky's report states that "concrete preparations for the consolidation of Islamist-jihadist springboards against the heart and lair of the Great Satan are being completed -- for Western Europe in the Balkans, for Russian and Eastern Europe in Chechnya, and for the United States in the tri-border area in Latin America."

The report also mentions that hurricane Katrina is an encouragement terrorists and poses a strategic opportunity.  Stratfor, on the other hand, believes that Al Qaeda's MO is to attack when ready, not around a specific event, and therefore thinks the Bodansky timing analysis is questionable.

I'm not sure where the "tri-border area" is with regards to the US, but I'm keeping an eye on this one.  Hopefully the report itself will pop up in the next few days.  There're a few other reports and think tank reports to read relating to this, and I'll post more.

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No More Bandar Bush

posted Wednesday, July 20, 2005 3:38 PM by hussain
Saudi's Prince Bandar bin-Sultan is resigning his post as Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the US after over 20 years of service.  That's it for you, Media, no more hand-holding pictures! (Yes, I know that was Prince Abdullah, not Prince Bandar)  Ignoring that "Bandar Bush" sounds suspiciously like a cartoon elephant, the Saudi's have decided to put Princeton, Cambridge, and Georgetown educated Prince Turki al-Faisal - former Saudi chief intelligence officer (aka "top spy") in the 1980s, former Ambassador to the UK,  son of the former King, and brother of Prince Saud - in the US as the Ambassador replacing Bandar, who is the son of Saudi's Defense Minister.  Lots of neat connections there. 

Seems like in the wake of 9/11 we're getting hints that the US wants stronger intelligence ties (or at least the impression of) with the oil-rich, terrorist-rich Kingdom.  Maybe we can get Osama Bin Laden's son out of Iran, make him a Pakistani citizen and replace their Ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodi (Yes, that link's to an interview with Oprah.)  Al-Jazeera doesn't have much commentary on the implications of the chief spymaster being put in Washington, but let me throw in a quote for you to chew on while you don your red white and blue dishdasha:

 Turki, 60, met several times with Osama bin Laden in the context of Saudi support for Muslim fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He later mediated between the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the Saudi government. [Bloomberg]

One can only hope that this appointment will, at the very least, cause Michael Moore to, once and for all, get even more red faced and explode.
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